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Author's Chapter Notes:
for whom the bell tolls
Holding on to that newfound sense of clarity, Shades made his way back down the hall, finding the door to the turret tower more readily than he expected to.

Understood now that he had been gradually working his way through some sort of illusion, and suspected that anyone else who entered Vineholdt could fall victim to the same thing. Having noticed the daylight pouring in through the windows again, he also knew the rainstorm was also all glamour, as well. Much to his relief, as he was at first afraid the place had somehow managed to delay his search until after nightfall.

Once again, he stood before that last narrow stretch of corridor leading to the tower, guarded by that impossibly dark doorway, whose visions of pale, groping hands had turned him back before. His feet always had a mind of his own, and now he realized that, even as his eyes were deceived by this place’s various diversions, his feet had been steadily leading him in the right direction all along. Though he suspected most of what he encountered around here were phantoms and figments, the fact that this house was known to swallow people whole meant that at least some of those things must be real. His run-in with Looking Glass John earlier struck him as a final warning, that he was getting close enough for the House to stop pulling its punches.

Couldn’t chance the hands that resisted him before not being illusory, but that still left the question of how to proceed.

Recalling that feeling from earlier, that burning rage against the phantom in the mirror, he stared down that dark door. Knew he just opened a can of whoop-ass earlier, though from whence, he had no idea. In this eldritch place that played it fast and loose with the laws of nature, he might still be able to do something more.

“I’m here to see the Lord of the Manor,” he declared, recalling the stern portraits on display throughout the mansion. Of course, that fellow still took a back seat to the more prominent paintings of his widow, Veronica, who seemed to be the true head of House Rigby, but he figured he may as well add insult to injury while he was busy living dangerously. Found he also recalled that phrase from some book he read in an elective Intro to Psych course he took last semester, as well as a snatch of that creepy poem he stumbled across in the Harken Building, but he pushed that aside as he focused on the path ahead of him.

Taking a deep breath, he imagined himself on fire, an aura of eldritch flames that would burn anything that tried to touch him. Nearly fumbled his concentration when he noticed that he could almost see those shimmering flames as he strode forward. Thus he resisted the hands, real or imagined, as he passed the door and at last reached the one he was seeking before.

Though he doubted this flame he had kindled could compete with this place’s power for long, he understood that he just crossed another threshold from which there was no turning back anymore.

Reaching out with a still burning hand, he found the reinforced wooden door firmly locked. Having no experience picking an old-fashioned lock like this, he kicked the door. Only to find that it didn’t even so much as rattle in its frame.

“Hello!” a little girl’s voice called out from behind the door. “Who’s out there?”

“A friend,” Shades answered, recalling old tales about the dangers of revealing names, and deciding to play it cautious.

Concentrating that battle-fire into himself, he focused on his legs and stepped back into a strong front stance. Holding Kelly Edward’s bleached bones in the forefront of his mind, he reminded himself that the same evil power that turned the Woods loose on her was the same power that now held Melissa’s life in the balance. He kicked again, this time busting the lock, leaving the door barely hanging on its hinges.

Inside, he found a square, stone-walled study, with a scroll desk, a small table, and walls crammed with bookshelves, as well as a corner-turning stairway leading up to the next level of the tower. An area rug had been rolled aside, and some sort of arcane ritual circle inscribed upon the hardwood floor, in the center of which sat a little redhead girl in bib overalls. Pale and haggard, her face streaked with tears, she gazed at him in wide-eyed astonishment, as if trying to make up her mind if he was really real.

“Are you okay?” was all Shades could come up with to say as he entered. He silently thanked their former travel companion, Ma’Quiver, for helping him tighten his concentration under pressure during their training, and hoped it would be enough to see this through. Though he still harbored suspicions in the back of his mind that this might be another distraction, everything about this situation seemed to ring truer than that pale imitation of John.

“I… I think so,” Melissa mumbled, her voice as weak as her movements.

“How did you get all the way up here, anyway?” Shades wondered aloud, remembering her original purpose for even entering the house.

“Well…” she stammered, looking a tad sheepish, “I found the ball, but then I saw this kitten. I wanted to help, but she kept running away, so I followed her upstairs…” By the look on her face, her own decision apparently didn’t sound very bright to her, either, in hindsight. “She led me to this room, then started walking in circles around me after I stepped in the circle… It’s… it’s like a cage, I can even see the bars out of the corner of my eye… even after the door shut and locked…”

“We need to get out of here,” he told her. “I don’t think we have much time left.”

“But… if I leave the circle, something bad will happen to me, I know it…” Melissa pleaded. “There are… things out there, and the bars keep them out… If only Sister Clarice was here, she’d know what to do…”

“Travis, I can handle. This…” Shades found he had no reassurance to offer. Wasn’t sure he could do anything useful from here anyway. But how to explain walking away, even to find this Sister Clarice? Every fiber of his being rejected the thought of giving up when he was so close, and he found the fire rising up within him again. Reaching out, he answered, “No, the opposite is true. Something bad will happen to you if you stay inside the circle.”

Letting the fire flow through his arm in a mighty blaze, he pushed through the spectral bars surrounding the circle, and they burned away at his touch.

Seeing him break through her cage, her eyes lit up in hope, and she reached out to him”

Only to collapse at the next tolling of that infernal godfather clock, her skin turning even more pale, her limbs limp, her gasping breath shallow and strained, eyes pinched shut in obvious pain, and he understood that he would have to carry her from here.

Feeling a malevolent presence bearing down on him, he turned to see a black cat sitting in the doorway, staring at him with green eyes that seemed to burn with their own inner light.

That fearsome feline face seemed to zoom up huge in his sight, even as the room appeared to expand in all directions…

Shades blinked and shook his head, pushing back with his mind in some way he didn’t fully understand, and both the room and the cat returned to their original size.

The cat’s glare intensified.

If he understood this correctly, he very nearly imagined himself as a mouse. Which meant this thing could cast some frighteningly powerful illusions, that even looking into her eyes was dangerous. At least he hoped they were only illusions, though he doubted it really mattered in here.

The dawning realization that he was fighting with something he had only a tenuous grasp of, against a being that surely had many years of practice on him, and the second he lost his grip… Even as he focused on his outrage at this thing, which may once have been human, and become both more and less than in the bargain, a weight of futility threatened to smother his fiery aura. Understood this was the mystical equivalent of flailing wildly at a Kung-Fu master, bracing himself against the certainty that this could only end badly, no matter how much power he summoned.

Struggling to keep it together as that ominous clock continued to chime, louder and longer than any previous instance, knowing full well for whom that bell tolled as the cat’s eyes widened abruptly.

Sensing something stir, he turned back to see Melissa’s eyes flutter open, staring blankly ahead, then dilated. In frozen horror, he watched her rise slowly, stiffly, to her feet, then turn toward the back of the room. She made her way woodenly over to a small closet door beneath the turret stairs, revealing not a closet but a hidden stairway leading back down through the tower.

In his desperation, running out of time against a foe who had years to master this mysterious power he just tripped over five minutes ago, he turned to see the cat’s eyes fairly glowing with triumphant satisfaction at his faltering.

It was in that dire moment, as he agonized over what to do” try to stop Melissa’s descent, or perhaps attack the cat in an attempt to break her hold over the girl” that Melissa collapsed again. The clock’s tolling becoming jangled, distorted, breaking its solemn rhythm, and the entire house seemed to tense up. Felt something vaguely tectonic shift in the space around him, and nearly stumbled, despite the floor itself holding perfectly still.

Gone was the cat’s gloating gleam, replaced by a look of alarm as jangled as the bells themselves as she arched her back, hissing at him in spite, then bolted back down the hall.

Shades stood there for a long moment, wondering what new devilry was afoot.